But I did not see much of her until 1848, when we became the firm friends and correspondents that we remained until the end of her life. As I remember her at that time, she was of medium height, rather inclined to stoutness, with small, white, well-shaped hands, brown hair, large blue eyes, a small nose, full red lips, white teeth well divided, and a head--well, more than a match for most of the women, if not the men, of her set. Miss Curtis had many offers of marriage; but she thought it wrong for a woman to marry for a “home,” or unless she loved the man with a “love more enduring than life and stronger than death;” and as she did not meet such a man, she could not enter into her ideal marriage. But the friendships she made were warm and lasting, and the friends with whom she was associated have in these pages given their loving tribute to her characteristics and her capabilities. Miss Curtis’s literary efforts may be summed up as follows: first, “Kate in Search of a Husband, a novel by a Lady Chrysalis,” published by J. Winchester, New York, and twice in after years by unknown publishers. The authorship of this novel was claimed by one male writer, and another wrote a counterpart, called “Philip in Search of a Wife.” “Kate” was followed by “The Smugglers,” the scene of which was laid in her native town, and “Truth’s Pilgrimage, His Wanderings in America and in Other Lands,” an allegory. Both of these books were published in continued numbers in _The Offering_, and the first-named was copyrighted by a Boston firm in 1844, but was not published. Her last novel, “Jessie’s Flirtations,” was published first by George Munro in 1846 and afterwards by the Harpers; and it still holds its place in their “Library of Select Novels.” “S. S. Philosophy,” her last published book, is full of pithy paragraphs, containing (as her friend “Warrington” said in the _Lowell Journal_) “much that is sensible, sound, and salutary, as well as some considerable that is saucy and sarcastic.” She was for three years co-editor of _The Lowell Offering_; in 1854-1855 she was associate editor of the _Vox Populi_, a Lowell newspaper; and she also wrote for many leading journals, notably _The New York Tribune_, _The Lowell Journal_, _The Lowell American_, and N. P. Willis’s _Home Journal_ (N.Y.). Her _nom de plume_, “Mina Myrtle,” first used by her in the newspapers in 1847, became well known; it was afterwards appropriated by another author as “Minnie” Myrtle. (See Wheeler’s “Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction.”) During her last years Miss Curtis lived on a small farm in Needham, Mass., with her invalid niece, and was cared for and supported by her nephew, George H. Caldwell, brevetted lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meritorious service at Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness, and before Petersburg.